


The Lies We Tell Ourselves

by AkaShika



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Voldemort Wins, Brainwashing, Dark, Gen, Manipulation, Mind Games, Mind Manipulation, Mindfuck, Psychological Torture, Stockholm Syndrome, no really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 12:58:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16388159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkaShika/pseuds/AkaShika
Summary: Harry, Ron, and Hermione never escaped Malfoy Manor, six months later and Harry's no longer sure of how much of his life was really his or what the hell is going on.





	The Lies We Tell Ourselves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rightsidethru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rightsidethru/gifts).



> I saw this prompt and the first thing I thought was "The things I could do with this prompt!!" The second thing I thought was "I wonder how dark/creepy I can make something." I took my second thought and ran with it. This is possibly the darkest thing I've ever written and while I know I didn't hit everything in the prompt, I think I focused on the important things, minimal sex and the plot driving the story. 
> 
> My thanks as always go to my beta and also to the mods for hosting this wonderful fest.

_ "Am I scaring you?" _

_ Harry closed his eyes and tried to block out the voice. _

_ "Come now, Harry. You shouldn't ignore me." _

_ He shook his head, tried to dislodge the words from his mind. How long had he been lost here? _

_ He remembered... What did he remember? _

_ Ron leaving. Hermione crying. The Sword of Gryffindor at the bottom of a lake and a Patronus that lead him to it. _

Trap! _ his mind screamed at him.  _ Wake up!

_ He felt the cold links of the necklace he wore tighten. _

* * *

"Everything alright, Harry?"

Harry looked up to see the dark red eyes of his —captor, saviour — watching him carefully. He touched the pendant part of the locket he wore, which was now just a locket, and smiled. It was a brittle smile, one that indicated that Harry may break again soon, not that he knew that.

"Fine," he said, and he reached out to touch the Dark Lord. "I just had a weird dream. It's nothing." The touch he bestowed upon Voldemort was just a faint brush of fingers across the back of his hand, but the Dark Lord knew what it meant.

He touched Harry's forehead with the back of his hand, as if testing his temperature.

"Hmm."  _ Sometimes _ , Voldemort thought to himself,  _ Brainwashing the Wizarding saviour is more trouble than it's worth. _ "You have a slight fever. I want you to take a potion and head back to bed for a few hours. Hopefully it's nothing."

* * *

Pain. Heat. Burning. There was no one there.

No one around. No one but him.

Harry hated this wasteland of everything more than anything else.

Nothing was real. Every person he saw were incredibly solid looking ghosts.

The newspapers weren't real. The people weren't real. Not even the food was real.

In a world filled with buildings, people, animals; in a world so much like the one outside his fever and dreams and nightmares, the only thing besides himself that he could touch was his locket.

Until he came.

And he would. He’d always come before. Tom. Voldemort. The Dark Lord. He always came for Harry.

* * *

Voldemort looked at the boy lying on the bed. Sweating, in pain, clutching desperately to a cold, golden locket as though it were his only link to the world.

Voldemort smiled.

* * *

It took a week for Harry's fever to break. When he woke up, he felt like he was covered in an itchy film and although he felt weak, he really wanted a shower. His voice croaked when he tried to speak.

"Tom?"

Tom held a straw to Harry's lips and encouraged him to drink. "Are you feeling better?" he asked as he brushed one hand through Harry's hair. Harry leaned into the touch. He hated getting ill, he hated feeling like the dreams he had were real. He felt the skin of Tom's palm against his cheek and Harry let out a relieved breath. He'd been so sure that this would be the time he woke up and Tom wasn't real either.

Tom helped Harry to the shower and when he was done. He felt more real, more alive, more normal, than he had in weeks.

When Tom helped him get dressed, Harry felt it was as close to the best time as it could be.

Since Tom had rescued/kidnapped him, he asked Harry to think about what he knew about the war and Dumbledore and Voldemort and even himself. Harry had thought long and hard about everything over the course of months. Tom hadn't said anything else to him about it, but the nights when he woke up alone and scared with only Tom's locket around his neck to keep him feeling like he was in the real world, and Harry'd come to a horrifying conclusion.

"I didn't know anything." Harry's voice was strong but still so quiet. "Everything I knew, I'd learned from Dumbledore." He paused for a moment, swallowing down the sickness he felt at being manipulated by Dumbledore. "I'm not sure how he would have wanted me to figure out that I was a Horcrux, but it doesn't matter. Not as much as the idea that he basically wanted me to kill myself in the end."

Tom's expression, to Harry, was one of fear, with a bit of pride, but hiding behind it, Harry thought he could see the steel that would keep Harry safe no matter what.

The only pride Voldemort felt was for himself. He'd had Potter and his little friends in his grasp now for months and while he hadn't done anything to the mudblood and blood-traitor just yet, he was happily keeping them safe in case he needed to add more pressure to Harry.

He'd learned very quickly after their capture what they were hunting and that they weren't having a lot of luck. He'd immediately sent Bella to her Gringotts vault and had her retrieve his Horcrux from the long-fingered thieves that guarded wizarding gold.

After demonstrating the appropriate regret that a child had lost their life to make his treasure, the absorption of his soul piece moved along quickly, if incredibly painfully. It wasn't something he was going to do again in a hurry and so he'd left his locket with his new pet — or rather with the person he hoped would be his — and looked into other, non-magical, methods of subjugating someone.

The result sat before him. Harry Potter with wide eyes, feeling ill and distraught because his mentor planned to murder him.

Voldemort would have cackled had it not been an incredibly cliché thing for him to do.

Instead, he took Harry into his arms, ran a hand through his hair, and whispered lies meant to soothe. While Harry cried on his shoulder and twisted his fingers in the robes at his chest, Voldemort thought it was time to move onto the others.

* * *

After Tom left, Harry held tight to the locket that lay against his chest and breathed slowly. He wished he could feel the cold tick of the lockets heart, like he could when he was on the run, but the locket was as still and as silent as ever.

An image flashed through his mind of himself, begging to be able to sleep, begging for the lights to be turned out, and Harry shook it away.

That had been one of his first fever dreams, one that came back to him now and then. Tom told him that he was lucky he and his friends had survived. They'd barely been dragged to the Manor before being thrown in the dungeons. He'd suffered the Dark Lord's questioning and then —

He woke a month later with Tom telling him he'd almost died. He spoke in a cold, clinical voice, and when he'd turned to face Harry, he'd looked almost normal. Normal for a person, not normal for the psychopath/Dark-Lord that Harry had thought was going to kill him.

He'd assured Harry that he'd be fine and they spoke every day. Harry ate meals with him and Tom asked him to think about what he knew of the war. Despite Tom's assurances though, Harry kept getting ill again and again.

And every time he woke, Harry felt like this would be the time he lost his mind.

* * *

Voldemort watched as Harry pushed his food around his plate with his fork. Every few minutes, his free hand would dart to the pendant hanging from his throat and he would let out a soft, relieved breath. Voldemort was the one who had noticed that the more he did that, the closer he was to exerting his own will again, the closer he was to not believing every word of honeyed poison that dripped from his lips. But it had barely been days since Harry had woke.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

Harry put his fork down gently, making sure not to clink it against the china. "Where are Ron and Hermione?" he asked.

Voldemort was surprised it had taken this long for Harry to ask.

"Your redhead is probably at home with the rest of his family. The girl has found the library and insists on not leaving until she's read a million books, or something to that effect."

Voldemort had made a habit of never telling Harry the whole truth.

"They're both alive then?"

"Of course they are. Did you think I'd killed them?"

Harry didn't answer, but his left hand reached up to touch his locket.

* * *

Harry fell ill quickly this time. But he recovered quickly, too. His dreams didn't bear thinking about, but he still couldn't put the Ron of his dreams out of his head. The worst part was that he recognised that Ron, the one of Fourth Year, the one of this year, and he knew that his stupid dream hadn't changed much of it. He reached up to touch his locket and he screamed.

When Tom ran in, Harry launched himself across the room and hugged him tightly. His locket wasn't real, but Tom was.

Harry didn't let Tom go too far from him for a few days.

* * *

The plan was working perfectly, of course. Voldemort knew everything that Harry was thinking and his reliance on the locket had become tedious, especially now that he was asking about his friends. He wasn't asking about his "illness" any longer; he was thinking of it as an everyday inconvenience for now. The idea that his time on the run had damaged his kidneys badly enough that they easily picked up infections was a master stroke, in Voldemort's eyes, even if it wasn't necessarily possible.

His dependence upon using the locket to establish if he was awake or not though was not going to help end the war with less bloodshed. Some of the only families fighting against him now were old, Purebloods of the highest order, ones who wouldn't stop until Harry made them. Voldemort wasn't stupid enough to believe that the Wizarding world would thrive without a few half-bloods and mudbloods but for that to happen, Voldemort needed to make sure that there was no one who would fight for them.

If Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, could see the sense in not fighting, Voldemort was sure that the rest of the Order would back off.

* * *

It was another two weeks before Tom convinced Hermione to leave the library and have dinner with them. Harry, as always, sat within reach of Tom, and Hermione sat opposite him. She looked like she'd been ill too, Harry thought. Her dark skin was pale and the bags under her eyes rivalled those that had been there during their third year. Harry looked from her to Tom and wondered if he'd really been torturing her for the last six months but another glance at Hermione told him that she wasn't scared to be sat next to him, or even in the same room as him, so he put it out of his mind.

They ate the first course in silence, Harry looking between Tom and Hermione with every bite. Hermione wouldn't stop watching him and Tom ate as normal. Harry refrained from reaching for Tom, he tried to assure himself that this was real without the comfort of touching someone. He told himself that he was holding a spoon, and that he could taste the food. He hoped it would be enough.

While they waited for the second course to be brought to them, Harry fiddled with the cuff of his sleeve. The meal was tense and Harry knew that sooner or later Hermione would explode with questions. He didn't know how Hermione would react if he reached for Tom; he didn't know what she would say if he told her he felt like he was going crazy. He just wanted to avoid it all, so he suppressed his instinctive urge to touch Tom's hand until his own hands shook with the effort.

When something made a giant bang outside the door though, Harry reached without a thought. Tom moved his hand so that they were palm to palm and Harry curled his fingers around Toms, holding on tight, reminding himself this was real.

After a few minutes, Harry calmed down. He opened his eyes to see Hermione staring at him with shock and no little horror in her expression.

"Why?" she asked, her voice filled with undisguised pain and even a little fury.

It took Harry a few minutes to realise what she was asking. He tightened his hold on Tom's hand and looked at her fully for the first time since they'd sat down.

"I just want to live."

 


End file.
